Wedding hells

In the good old days of the gay liberation movement, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the excitement of challenging the orthodoxy attracted even the shy and apolitical to its cause. To those of us around at the time, it felt like a cultural insurgency: a rejection of compulsory heterosexuality and the lifestyle that accompanied it. But now battle, such as it is, has changed utterly. It seems to involve people like David Cameron inviting gay people to conform to what he rightly calls the profoundly conservative institution of -marriage.

These new, well-spoken and self-appointed leaders of the gay rights movement want to rebel by conforming. To them, homosexuality is not really something to be proud of. Being tolerated, to them, is enough — and fighting wider battles against homophobia is too much like hard work. These men may not actually vote Tory, but their attitude seems utterly conservative. If they were to do anything as déclassé as go on protest marches, their banners would proclaim: ‘Don’t upset the applecart.’ They seem to want nothing more than to marry, and have little interest in anything resembling a wider cause.

These privileged gay men, for whom the battle has largely been won, have money, social standing, cosy domestic arrangements and move in circles where they are protected from the worst excesses of anti-gay bigotry. They show little interest about gay rights more broadly, or care that (for example) homosexuality remains criminal in 80 countries. They have now walked into the open arms of a Tory leadership, which sees in the gay marriage issue a chance to launder the party’s reputation for nastiness.

The Prime Minister has hardened his position and says he wants gay marriage in churches. He is fond of claiming this is now a Tory cause: that he wants it not ‘in spite of being a Conservative but because I am a Conservative’. He wants to portray himself as the Emmeline Pankhurst of gay rights, in a rather transparent attempt to persuade Labour and Liberal Democrat voters of the Tory party’s modernising credentials. Cameron’s mission is party political ‘detoxification’ with the gay rights movement to help him. To his delight, a number of them are happy to play along.

The moment that the gay rights movement took this wrong turning was in 1989, when Stonewall was founded. Its aim was to overthrow a pernicious law known as Section 28, which banned local authorities from intentionally promoting ‘the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship’. Eschewing the radical tactics of its predecessors, Stonewall threw away the placards and became placatory, asking for nothing more than the opportunity to blend into the background. Its goal was to mimic the heterosexual family structure. Soon after, the demands of the gay rights movement appear to be limited to a request to join the military, marry in church, and raise adopted children.

But the argument extends way beyond the marriage debate. These new conservative gays accept the theory that people are born genetically predisposed to homosexuality. They give the impression that no one would actually choose to be gay, if it could be helped. It ignores the evidence that many lesbians and gay men only come out in later life, when the opportunity to bat for the other side arises. The ‘born this way’ theory seeks to debar from the debate those of us who believe that being gay is a fabulous alternative to heterosexuality.

Many lesbian and gay long-term couples I know who were perfectly happy before this pro-marriage hysteria kicked off now feel looked down on by the marriage-mongers, both gay and straight. Take Ben Bradshaw, for example, a Labour MP who used to argue that gay marriage was not a priority because civil partnerships were perfectly fine to establish legal and social equality. He has recently changed his tune, and has joined the pro-marriage cabal. Nowadays, unmarried straight couples probably encounter less disapproval than gay couples who do not want to marry.

And how many will join Cameron in his crusade? A recent ComRes survey of 541 lesbian, gay and bisexual adults found that only half think it is important to extend marriage to same-sex couples, while just over one in four would marry their partner if the law allowed it. This is the same proportion as those not in a civil partnership who would seriously consider one. But marriage is growing in popularity among younger gays in particular (something that can’t be said for young straights). And what could be more conservative than the institution of marriage?

Bradshaw was right first time. There are so many better, more urgent causes. Homophobic bullying is rife in schools around the UK with young people being attacked and, in some cases, driven to suicide. There are countless young gay people who are still rejected by their families and colleagues. Then there is the issue of ‘punishment rape’ of lesbians, by no means confined to the recent cases in South Africa. But these are all gritty, grim subjects — and the new breed of conservative gay people seem to want nothing more than an easy life, and a day in church followed by a best man’s speech, coronation chicken and a smooch to ‘Lady in Red’.

Gay actor Rupert Everett hit the nail on the head during a recent interview when he admitted that he ‘loathes’ heterosexual weddings. ‘The wedding cake, the party, the champagne, the inevitable divorce two years later, is just a waste of time in the heterosexual world. In the homosexual world I find it, personally, beyond tragic that we want to ape this institution that is so clearly a disaster.’ I couldn’t agree more. The gay rights movement has not only lost its teeth but started operating like an elderly claret-soaked Tory: all bloated, smug and plodding.

This article first appeared in the print edition of The Spectator magazine, dated 12 January 2013

Kindle

More Spectator for less. Subscribe and receive 12 issues delivered for just £12, with full web and app access. Join us now.

Abigail

The “born this way” argument helps me accept myself, which is difficult having grown up among hostility, and helps me argue against idiots who claim mine is a disgusting, free, choice. If Exodus International believes it is impossible to change orientation in most cases, who can argue with any intellectual respectability that it is not?

How could “born this way” stigmatise those who really have made a choice? I was born this way, you were born that way. Simple. That I did not have another choice does not mean mine would have been a bad choice if someone has a free choice.

OTW

I think the point is that we shouldn’t have to say “but it’s genetic” to justify who we love or have sex with, because this heavily implies that justification is needed, thus tacitly agreeing with the traditional homophobic cultural narrative.

http://twitter.com/gdeichen Gavin Deichen

You shouldn’t have to, but if it is in fact the case it still remains a fact, even if it’s theoretically irrelevant in an ideal world. In practice the genetic basis of sexuality remains one of the strongest reasons to fight for this particular freedom in preference to fighting for other types of freedom.

http://www.facebook.com/dellagracevolcano Del LaGrace Volcano

Julia Bindel and I are not often on the same page but today I find we are at least reading in the same library. What I agree with is that there are far, far more urgent issues LGBT and I (for Intersex, not Invisible) that people concerned with equal human rights for all need to be concentrating on.

Stonewall, the organization, should be ashamed of itself, for many reasons, including it’s persistent refusal to include transgender in it’s mission statement-especially considering the leading roles that transgender people played in the original Stonewall Riots. But I digress.

I’ve always said that my queer sexual orientation was a product of my intelligence. What intelligent person (assigned female at birth) would by CHOICE inhabit a position of inferiority? So, while I definitely feel that being in a similar sex relationship and genderqueer IS a choice, it’s also a privilege. What I was born with was a great deal of personal agency and confidence. I know too many people who either feel they were born in the wrong body or that even though they may have preferred to be straight they can’t be for me to extrapolate from my experience of life and make assumptions/proclamations about them or for them.

Nicholas Billingham

This is wildly over the top and I’m getting a bit bored with all these refugees from the 70s and 80s slagging off all their fellow gays and lesbians who don’t agree with them. Yes, I was against marriage then but it has changed since even if not enough and when my young straight friends get married these days its a much more equal venture between the women and men. So tho I don’t particularly want to get married myself I’m more than happy to support those who do want to. What I object to most though is the charge that anyone who has modified their views over the past 40 years somehow doesn’t care for the problems and homophobia still suffered by so many especially in other countries. That is a gross calumny which you should withdraw.

Nicholas Billingham

PS sorry Grace I pressed the wrong button! my ire is directed against the original article rather than your comment!

Helka

I think marriage is a toxic institution so laden with unpleasant symbolic and practical baggage that I can’t see why anyone would want it. We used to have a critique of marriage – whatever happened to that?
However, it is utterly immoral that one group should be permitted to marry and another should not – so of course all people must have the same right to marry, in the same way (including civil partnerships for straight people). Religious institutions must as a matter of urgency have their exemption from discrimination laws removed. (As the female bishops fiasco also shows.)

I do agree that there are far more urgent issues facing gay people. (The fact that “gay” continues to be used to mean “crap” among young people I think is a fair indicator of how far the struggle for equality still has to go.) And I think we all need new and better institutions, not to fight to participate in old, shit ones. But I think on principle we should all be able to, equally, if we want.

OTW

I agree with Helka…whether marriage is good or bad, it is most definitely bad to have one set of rules and rights for one set of people and another set of rules for others. This sort of thing actually stops us from making progress in other areas – i.e. if homosexual couples can marry, it’s likely to help to curb the prevalence of the word “gay” as a synonym for “bad”, for instance. Everything that signals that homosexuals are not to be treated differently than others and are, in fact, completely “normal people”, will help with the other issues.

I think that long-term, monogamous relationships are quite normal for humans. Normal doesn’t have to mean that all other things are wrong or not normal. But it is certainly among the normal patterns of human relationship behavior.

Furthermore, rituals, celebrations and blessings have also always been a part of human society and the human psyche, in some form or other.

When you put these two together, you get people who seek a ritualized way of expressing their feelings for one another and their commitment to a relationship. I think that marriage can be seen in this light or it can be seen in the light of the society we now have (and have had for the longest time). Marriage does not have to change a person’s status, rights, name or outlook on life, as it does with the institution of patriarchal marriage, in which one person essentially becomes another person’s property.

I fully understand the people who criticize the institution of marriage and reject it, but I would seriously stop at labeling all those who marry as conservative or as obstacles to progress. There are many different ways to see human relationships and to live them, and the patriarchal form of binding two people in a legal contract in which one becomes master over the other is in fact a perversion of what a symbol of human union, held sacred by its fully consenting and loving members, *could* be.

http://www.facebook.com/nusbacher Lynette Nusbacher

I think that if anyone wants to reject traditional marriage as the model for their own couplehood or family structure they ought to feel free to, especially if they do not intend to raise children. That applies regardless of sexual orientation and regardless of whether any individual’s sexual orientation is inborn or acquired. So I agree with Julie and Rupert Everett and the old Ben Bradshaw.

I also think that a religion (such as Reform and Liberal Judaism) that wants to build families around marriage should not be held back by UK law in doing so.

I also think that a distinction in law between a civil partnership option which applies only to same-sex partnerships and a marriage option which applies only to opposite-sex partnerships is first a “separate but equal” distinction which must discriminate against the minority side of the divide: people who desire same-sex partners. That is to say, the distinction is inherently bad for LGB people. So I agree with David Cameron and the new Ben Bradshaw.

The distinction between same-sex and opposite-sex marriages also demands an unambiguous sex binary which, as technology shows greater variation than the XX-XY distinction I learned about in school, seems impractical. The distinction between same-sex civil partnerships and opposite-sex marriages also clashes with the (appalling) marriage provisions of the Gender Recognition Act 2004.

So people should feel free to redefine relationships and break away from traditional marriage, but people should have the right to have marriage without distinction based on sex or sexual orientation.

Eddie

‘but people should have the right to have marriage without distinction based on sex or sexual orientation’
Can I marry my cat then?
Or perhaps my telly?
Or a rock?
Just think of the advantages! No costly divorce settlements; no messy sexual issues or meopausal old hags drooping theiy shrivelled dugs in your face when you’re trying to sleep; no stupid sprogs demanding rispek menaces to protect their precious self-esteem.

Daniel Leduc

We are talking about humans here, please stay focused.,,

James Moriarty

Was Section 28 really “pernicious”? Teaching kids that homosexual relationships are as appropriate as heterosexual ones is promoting an obvious falsehood, and corrupting youth into the bargain. School is not the place for sexual relationships of any kind, and those with homosexual inclinations need to suppress them.

http://twitter.com/gdeichen Gavin Deichen

Congratulations, you’re troll of the day! *hands over rosette*.

Chippie

His name being ‘James Moriarty’ is the first hint.
Trolls, please up your game. We ain’t feeding you.

saintlaw

A ‘falsehood’ obvious only to a moron.

Actually I correct that – a crazy.

“School is not the place for sexual relationships of any kind”. By your logic the teaching of heterosexual reproduction should be off the syllabus.

jazatw

Hard to know where to begin with this deeply-flawed and disappointing article.
”
” It ignores the evidence that many lesbians and gay men only come out in later life, when the opportunity to bat for the other side arises.” Or, as one who came out in later life, you are so used to lying to yourself that you actually believe it — for a while. In the end the lying to yourself becomes impossible to sustain.

“The ‘born this way’ theory seeks to debar from the debate those of us who believe that being gay is a fabulous alternative to heterosexuality.” You seem to be suggesting, as many homophobes like to claim, that homosexuality is a choice. If so then that fundamentally undermines any human rights claim. If being gay is merely a preference, like supporting West Ham, then it is not a question of rights.

As for it somehow implies a need for justification, it no more does that than saying I was born short-sighted implies the need that I justify wearing glasses. Neither is in need of justification.

“To them, homosexuality is not really something to be proud of.” I am no more proud of being homosexual than I am of wearing glasses. I am proud of what I have achieved, not for how I was born.

“Being tolerated, to them, is enough” It is actually worse than that. I don’t want to be tolerated, I want to be absolutely indistinguishable. I want my homosexuality to be of exactly the same consequence as my supporting West Ham, or wearing glasses. A part of who I am, not a definition of who I am.

“There are so many better, more urgent causes.” And one way you tackle those causes is by showing the utter normality of homosexuality.

That Mr. Everett dislikes wedding cake is not an argument against treating all members of society equally.

Augustus

“And one way you tackle those causes is by showing the utter normality of homosexuality.”

Wow, you’ve lost me there. The fruit of morale relativism no doubt. You could easily argue that gay marriage is itself homophobic: A law that encourages homosexual couples to think they can copy and fit in the way heterosexual couples behave, and makes them think they have to follow the example of the rest of humanity without respecting sexual differences, denies true respect for homosexual couples with regard to their specificity and who they really are. Because, obviously, gay couples do not exist so that they can be procreative, society isn’t recognizing their true identity by turning them into ‘married’ couples.

Eddie

Actually Augustus, homosexual behaviour is present is most animal behaviour – so yes, it is normal and natural. (Though of course until this was discovered, an argument used by the religious bigots was that ‘animals don’t do it so when people do it’s unnatural’!).
I have yet to see two goats, or geese, or dolphins get married though.
That is because marriage is a cultural thing, mostly about inheritance issues actually (in legal form), and yes meeting the needs of a pre-modern society that needed loads of children to work the land.
The differenc here is between homosexuality as a behaviour, and homsexuality as a ‘gay’ lifestyle. They have plenty of the former all over the world, but not the latter: that’s a modern Western invention.

Augustus

Yes, a modern Western invention where nobody seems all that bothered about the children. Not only being traded like toys, but what they end up thinking about it all. Children are entitled to a father and a mother who love each other and who love them, because that’s what their nature requires. I suspect that a great number of sons and daughters of homosexuals turn out the same as their parents. Homosexual parenting may quite literally breed homosexuality where there would have been none. Where is their freedom of choice? The game is over and the choice made for them before their life even starts.

Daniel Leduc

What a load of crap. Are your kids as dumb as you are? Some heterosexuals are incestuous, does that mean that you all are? That you bread deviant kids?

saintlaw

Christ but you’re thick.

Nele Schindler

Some animals eat their young. Some gang-rape their females. Some devour their males right after the act of coupling.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t necessarily look to a horde of primates for handy hints on how to conduct myself.

Eddie

My point was that 2 or 3 decades ago the argument of the evangelicals and other gay-haters was that ‘homosexual behaviour is not natural because animals don’t do it’.
Well, they’ve been truly hoisted by their own petard, eh?
Now, you say ‘animals do it. so it’s not natural for humans too’
Jeez – anyone would think these Christian bigots swung bothe ways or something!

Eddie

Mzzzz Bindle is a well known manhater and a career feminist whinger.
Bindle and other feminists and some gay rights people love to label people and categorise them – then treat people as traitors to the cause if they do not meet certain right-on criteria. They are, actually, bigots.
People are people – and many gay and straight people are opposed to gay marriage for religious or cultural reasons. They are not all homophobic bigots by any means. And their reasons for being anti-gay marriage vary.
However, I do agree with Bindle that gay marriage stinks because all marriage stinks – especially for men. Maybe that’s why so many don’t get married now?

http://twitter.com/gdeichen Gavin Deichen

Who cares if there are more urgent things? There’s the option of a reasonably simple change to improve equality that sends out the ever-important message that it’s perfectly OK to be gay. What’s wrong with that? Is it so important that gay people remain angry at society and fight for gay rights? Perhaps some people would like to settle down and have a “normal” life rather than being professional gays or activists? Maybe they’d like to fight for something else or for nothing at all. Why should being gay or choosing to be gay or however else you view your sexuality dictate the way that you live your life, beyond who you happen to fancy or love?

Nele Schindler

Because it’s not perfectly OK to be gay. I’m happy to tolerate it and be polite about people’s lifestyles, and we don’t have to constantly argue about it either, but OK it’s not.

Daniel Leduc

Some people are ugly, some are fat, some are handicapped, some are dumb, some a shitty parents, some are thieves, some are smelly, some have no education, some bad tastes, some are immigrants… I am sure you fall in one of those categories. It’s OK, we need to accept each other. We are all strangers to one another, we are all a minority for others. Acceptance also mean that it’s OK. Hatred attracts hatred.

Nele Schindler

How did you know that I’m an overweight, slightly pungent Albanian immigrant in a wheelchair? It is uncanny! Now I must rush, the children have just come home from an afternoon of burgling middle-class homes and are always expecting a good beating before dinner! (By the way, I’m using voice recognition to type this since I cannot read or write very well.)

saintlaw

You don’t get to say, worm.

Kenneth James Abbott

And you don’t get to force him to say otherwise. And THAT is what’s at stake in the homosexual marriage debate.

http://twitter.com/angelique2067 angelique

Gay people are entitled to the same rights as straight people. For that simple reason, I support gay marriage.

Chippie

Yes.

DrCrackles

Why is anybody entitled to anything? All things worth having result from a deadly bloody struggle. This is why the liberal left need to realise the transformation of Britain cannot be achieved by mealy mouthed political campaigns, but military campaigns.

Eddie

Yes – they have the right to be just as miserable as straight persons, after all.
But really, why not just ban marriage completely? All it seems to do is bankrupt men anyway, and give women a free lottery win in later life!

Chippie

It seems to me that every single detractor of gay marriage has now realised that the arguments they used to make against gay marriage are rubbish. Y’know, the ones where they called homosexuality immoral, or talked about some ancient desert God, or said that babies needed two different sets of genitals looking after them to grow up normal.
And so now they just say: “It’s really not that necessary. Only 1 in 4 gay couples would get married anyway!” Well… Then… The legislation is still worthwhile for 1 in 4 gay couples… Isn’t it? That’s quite a high number, probably a hundred thousand people in the UK at least. If the position was reversed and we were discussing heterosexual marriage being legalised there’s no way these idiots would be saying: “Only 1 in 4 straight couples would get married anyway!”
When the legislation is passed they will have nothing left to their arguments and they shall finally crawl into the political corner and hide there, like they should.

Eddie

Does that include the very many gay people who are opposed to gay marriage? I know several who, for religious reasons, or tradition reasons, are against gay marriage. To think all who oppose it are bigots is, in fact, bigoted and ignorant in the extreme.

white patriarch

It will be interesting to see what Julie Bindel and Rupert Everrett have to say when our new Moslem overlords introduce Sharia Law in a few years and start stoning em to death: Look up “The Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets” by Andrew Gilligan.

Eddie

Yes, there hasn’t been a rush for moques and temples of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs to be allowed to perform gay marriages, has there?
Personally, I think because they have plenty of gay sex anyway, especially within the family. Those cultures are homosocial after all. And mor. Just read or watch The Kite Runner.

white patriarch

Moslems appear to be having lots of straight sex within the family as well. Pakistani kids are 30% of those with “learning difficulties” in the Uk today: mainly because of cousin marriage (and whisper it) a lot of these kids are the products of father-daughter incest.

white patriarch

Still, I suppose it is better than having em pimping and grooming white girls, I suppose.

white patriarch

Coming to Bradford soon……Bindel and the other feminazis will soon llook back on the good old days when all they had to worry about was the howwible white patwiacky

Saudi Arabia beheaded a woman after a child died while
in her care when she was still under 18-years-old, according to human
rights organizations. Saudi
Arabia on Wednesday beheaded the woman who came from Sri Lanka, putting the former domestic worker to death despite her young age at the time of the alleged offense.

The government of Sri Lanka had pleaded with the Saudi authorities to let
Rizana Nafeek live, as she was only 17-years-old and had been working in the country just a few weeks, when the baby died in her care in 2005.
She was one of hundreds of thousands of immigrants arriving from countries like Sri Lanka, Indonesia and the Philippines, working as maids to cook, clean and care for children.
She claimed that the child choked to death while drinking from a bottle, after originally confessing to murder she claimed was obtained under duress, according to human rights groups. Nafeek had no lawyer to defend her until she had already been sentenced to beheading, the human rights organizations said.

“Nafeek was only a child herself at the time working in Saudi Arabia with forged documents she obtained by recruiters,” Human Rights Watch
investigator, Nisha Varia said Wednesday. “Saudi Arabia should
recognize, as the rest of the world has long recognized that no child
should be put to death,” Varia added.

Someone being executed for crimes committed as a minor is a violation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Saudi Arabia is a
part. The country has agreed to it, however it still executed criminals
convicted of crimes committed when they were under 18, some as young as 13, according to Human Rights Watch.

Knives_and_Faux

Julie is my lesbian crush.

Harry

Ms Bindel comes from a very specific and narrow perspective. It’s called how society should look according to Bindel and Friends. Her argument is flawed as others here have stated. In the main because she misses what the LGBT civil partnership lobby themselves missed at the time of its inception, when they capitulated to a second class offer, the acceptance of which emanated from a fundamentally flawed piece of legislation that resulted in Civil Partnerships – or half-citizenship.

Or in words Ms Bindle might understand as her never-ending themes are radicalisation and feminism it made all LGBT’s second class citizens. And she voted for it, when she would have trampled people to death if they had made such an offer to women! She sites Ben Bradshaw as having changed his mind, that he chose an easy life’– that is because he is a pragmatist, who accepted that change would happen a bit at a time. And possibly because he hadn’t really thought through the arguments about full and inclusive rights. Now he has, and well done him. I
don’t suppose Ms Bindel chose and easy life, she didn’t run away from engaging
with her heterosexuality then? Wasn’t it easier to be a feminist when there were no men allowed into the camp?

Bindel laments pathetically her lost days as a Greenham Common squatter, where she learned to love women physically rather than sexually. This phenomenon of
sex without commitment is not unknown, in fact it’s quite common amongst abused
women and girls who are trafficked or end up involved in prostitution. They are
not having a Relationship with their clients (by contrast with marriage between loving adults) they engage in the sale of sexual services without being in a relationship with the buyer other than being one of the ‘exchange of labour’! For these women the feminists have developed a sort of mantra that they are in control of their bodies; of their earnings, and of their lives. Apparently it’s an ideal scenario that all women should espouse to follow – and therefore so should all LGBT’s. If this is the way to go.. surely Bindel should put herself on the streets of London. She might write more convincingly of the benefits of being an Independent Woman!

It’s twisted and strange that Bindle claims to defend both battered and abused women, but also demands the right for these same women to remain in situations they were forced into because of addictions to drugs, alcohol and violence in their daily lives. These women’s real life experiences were dovetailed into arguments espoused by feminists about women’s ownership of their bodies (abortion / sexual politics) mixing up freedom from abuse with freedom of expression – the freedom to choose with the right to Be for several decades.

And that is another point Ms Bindel has missed – People need the Right to Be who they are.. before they are able to make choices about how they express themselves or use their bodies, whether that be for profit from the selling of un-committed sex or
taking steps to change body image to match the person within.

How many years has it taken for LGBT’s to gain acceptance. According to Bindle acceptance must be a Tory ideal – so why were people of the left campaigning for it? To achieve ones goals is to turn to the right, is it? To become fat and
comfortable – she says from her cosy middle class flat in London where she
lives with her financially well heeled partner.

Yes Ms Bindle, Marriage is beside the point and always was. The Battle as she puts it was for Rights. The Battle still is for Rights. But we LGBT’s also want a bit of heaven!

Daniel Leduc

Well put Harry! I can’t believe that members of LGBT community would defend positions that are against their own interests (the right to chose, the right to be equally treated). I lived with the same man for more than 30 years, we got married 3 years ago. It did not change our everyday lives (neither my neighbor’s) but on the long run it will prove that we are not different than heterosexuals. We are not second class citizens. From Canada.

Philip Ford

Julie, as a gay man now in his late 40′s I have to agree with your piece and it is refreshing, at last, to hear another setting out just what I feel about the entire ‘gay marriage’ debacle. I see no reason at all for LGBT people to push for actual ‘marriage’ when (and, as a UKIP supporter, it grieves me to say it) thanks in large part to New Labour we now enjoy rights and freedoms under the law, including those of a civil partnership.

For LGBT people to willfully go picking a fight with organised religion is a folly and distraction – as you say there are many far more deserving (and urgent) causes for the LGBT community to be fighting. Sometimes I despair of those with whom I share a certain solidarity – and I certainly agree with Rupert Everett’s witty and incisive summing up of the situation.

Daniel Leduc

There are plenty other causes, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. It is not a question of defining if it is good or bad to get married, and religion has nothing to do with this. It is only a question of other people telling you, as a minority, what you have the right to do or not. We should all stand for that simple principle: each of us has the right to decide what is good or bad for himself, as long as it is not an obstacle to the liberties of others. We should not let others dictate what we can or can not do. It is a simple case of self respect.

Picquet

Cameron was only saying those things to bloat his vote. There’s nothing conservative or Conservative about homosexual ‘marriage’. He has driven many of the natural C/conservatives out of the party, me for one.

http://twitter.com/fascistCOW ッ

brilliant! I am gay and I don’t support gay marriage. I wouldn’t marry if I was straight unless it was for money. Marriage is between a man & a woman. Civil partnerships are for queers and were the only credible crap that came out the labour party arse machine in their 13 years of hell. Marriage is for suckers.

Daniel Leduc

I got married with my lover after 30 years living together and I am very happy about it. I would not necessarily recommend marriage to everyone but why deny that right to those who chose to? The fact that you don’t want to marry does not mean that it is reasonable to forbid a group of people to have access to it. Don’t you realize that you act as you community own enemy?

Eddie

Now see Daniel, you are doing what people always do there: accusing someone who does not share your views of prejudices of being a traitor to their tribe. Ironically, Julia Manhater BinBundle does exactly the same thing in her silly article.
Believe it or not, many people gay and straight disagree with the idea of gay marriage, Many of these are happy for civil partnerships to stay as they are. But marriage has religious and traditional connotations – it was never intended to allow two people of the same sex to marry, That is all people are saying – and that is not a bigoted position (though it may well be held by some bigots).
Of course, the loud and angry pro-gay marriage lobby is full of bigots too who refuse to countenance any diversity of opinion.
Just to add: you sound French – France is WAY more conservative than Britain in this. Secondly, it has to be said that a large majority of ethnic minorities are against gay marriage and most are also hateful of gays – as in those who live a gay lifestyle (not opposed to the behaviour which they indulge in).

Daniel Leduc

Eddie, I am French Canadian, and we have settled this matter in 2005. Marriage here is not a religious thing, many heterosexuals marry outside the church. Honestly I don’t get it. Why would you forbid a group of people to have the same right as the majority? I get that you don’t believe in marriage, that’s fine, but why do you want every gays to do as you do, to chose what you chose?

Nele Schindler

I don’t get the totally irrelevant majority/minority dichotomy. People against these proposals don’t regard marriage as one of their inventions that they somehow deny you because they don’t like gays. That’s nonsense. It is seen as a tradition or a religious institution that we are not free to redefine, and that’s a point of view I respect.

Daniel Leduc

Definition of marriage is so different all over the world. There is not only one definition. Everything changes over time, even traditions.

Eddie

Yeah, lots of gay people I know are against it. The agenda promoted by the pc media esp the BBC is that all gay persons – acting like some coral colony blob – all support the same thing.
Well, gay people are a complete cross section of the population – though more will be visible in tolerant white middle class circles than in Islamofascist head-chopping ones.
I do agree that marriage – if it’s going to be so easy to end in divorce – if is something best avoided, especially by males; 50 years ago, I would have said best avoided by females too.
Why not just have civil partnerships for those that want them? This is the same as the blessings that were carried out in churches between male friends in the middle ages.
I think some real marriage obsessives are lobbying for gay marriage because THEY want to wear nice frocks perhaps on their big day?
For most gay people I know, the right to get married is not one they consider urgent or more important than, for example, stopping black churches and Muslim schools from spreading hatred against gay people (though as a behaviour same sex liaisons are SO common amongst south Asian Muslims! I know SO many blokes oop north who have been come on too by Pakistani taxi drivers!)

Daniel Leduc

This is the most ridiculous article I have read for years. To suggest that being gay is a choice (why not a trend), that being gay implies a simple and easy choice with the goal of overthrowing conventions, is spreading prejudices like a thick layer of jam over homophobia. Do you really think that by being called “conservatives” will make us be ashamed of wanting the same rights as the majority? Don’t you realize that some of us came out of the closet later because we were raised thinking that we were abnormal, that it takes courage (and time) to admit it and that the fact that you are not allowed to act like others (including getting married) is pointing in that direction?

With this kind of reasoning marriage between blacks and whites would not even be possible today. Less than fifty years ago, some people in USA thought that interracial marriage was not a good idea. Don’t you remember that? But some of us realize that it comes to one simple thing: no matter the reason, no matter what some rich actor thinks of it all, the gays should have the same rights as the others, even if it sounds square, or conservative, boring or not hip. It’s a matter of choice, our choice, not yours.

Daniel Leduc

This is the most ridiculous article I have read for years. To suggest that being gay is a choice (why not a trend), that being gay implies a simple and easy choice with the goal of overthrowing conventions, is spreading prejudices like a thick layer of jam over homophobia. Do you really think that by being called “conservatives” will make us be ashamed of wanting the same rights as the majority? Don’t you realize that some of us came out of the closet later because we were raised thinking that we were abnormal, that it takes courage (and time) to admit it and that the fact that you are not allowed to act like others (including getting married) is pointing in that direction?

With this kind of reasoning marriage between blacks and whites would not even be possible today. Less than fifty years ago, some people in USA thought that interracial marriage was not a good idea. Don’t you remember that? But some of us realize that it comes to one simple thing: no matter the reason, no matter what some rich actor thinks of it all, the gays should have the same rights as the others, even if it sounds square, or conservative, boring or not hip. It’s a matter of choice, our choice, not yours.

Nele Schindler

I have had several ‘gays’ tell me that they choose to be gay. Unless they were lying through their teeth, which I don’t believe. One totally confirms Bindel’s argument, namely that she regarded Lesbianism as a better choice because men had hurt her in relationships.

There are many choices involved, not all of them great. A lot of gays are abnormally promiscuous because it’s the done thing. I think the truth is more that sexuality is a spectrum of grey for a lot of people, and that it might change over a lifetime, but not for spurious genetic reasons.

Still, people should live the way they like, even if it is ‘abnormal’, as long as they stay within the bounds of the law.

And you cannot compare interracial marriages at all, which are real marriages, since they take place between a man and a woman.

Daniel Leduc

There are still a lot of people who thinks that interracial marriages are unnatural and should be avoided. Your definition of marriage is not universal, especially since many countries do not differentiate marriage based on sexual orientation. What you think is natural, moral and normal might be something reprehensible elsewhere. Normality is a relative concept. Accepting differences is a sign of an open mind and wisdom.

Homosexual marriage has never been about “normalcy,” or about “fitting in,” or about the mythical “thousand rights” (a generally American argument). The purpose of homosexual marriage is in the pastors that are punished for not performing homosexual weddings, the photographers who are punished for not photographing them, the churches punished because they won’t rent out their halls for them, the bakers that are punished for not making their wedding cakes, and the counsellors who are punished for not helping them have more enjoyable homosexual sex.

In short, homosexual marriage is a bludgeon, a method to use government power against people who can tolerate homosexuality but will not personally endorse it–and this has ALWAYS been its goal.